Tag: Fear of Failure

Maximilien Van Aertryck and Axel Danielson are documentary filmmakers based in Gothenburg, Sweden, who have worked together since 2013. They created a short film where they recruited 67 people who have never jumped into a swimming pool from a height of 10m (by paying them an equivalent of 30 USD) and filmed these participants while they decided to jump or not and their actual jump.

Maximilien, on his website says,

People who have never been up there before have to choose whether to jump or climb down. The situation itself highlights a dilemma: to weigh the instinctive fear of taking the step out against the humiliation of having to climb down.

TEN METER TOWER is an entertaining study of the human in a vulnerable position.

Before we move on and I share my perspective about the experiment and the dilemma, lets first watch the video.

What is Happening here

In my opinion, the experiment not only captures the emotions of the participants really well, it also informs us of human behaviour, when confronted with a difficult choice.

This difficult choice could be about quitting a bad job, could be about starting a new venture, could be about getting out of a bad relationship or even about having a difficult conversation with someone we care about. Each one of these situations, puts us in a very similar position as the dilemma faced by the participants in the study.

And we typically react the same way that the participants react. Some of us chicken out and some of us are able to push through the fear and uncertainty and face the fear. It is easier when see someone do it just before we attempt.

This fear of unknown or ambiguity is the single biggest reason why most people never realise their true potential and many dreams are never fulfilled. There are myriad reasons why this fear is so crippling, not just psychologically but physically as well.

One way to explain this fear is something that Jonathan Haidt proposed. He argues that the human mind can be likened to the combination of a rider and an elephant that he rides. The rider is the part of the brain that is rational system. This is the part that can plan and decide based on evidence and data. The elephant is the part of the brain that is emotional. This system is geared towards survival and if there is a remote chance that this system senses any danger, it can and will override all other system and control our reactions.

Now, it was the elephant that was controlling the people in the experiment above. Their rider knows that they are not in mortal danger by jumping off into the pool from 10m height. They have seen many people do it and come out unharmed. However, their elephant is too strong and afraid. That is the reason why, one person even feels his knees go weak. This is a clear sign that the elephant is in control.

What can we do about it:

The question then is the following:

Why are some people able to go ahead and take the plunge, while others back off? And what can we do so that this fear doesn’t cripple us in the future?

The reason why some people are able to go ahead and take the plunge is because their elephants trust their riders a lot. This happens because in the past the rider has got the elephant to take micro-risks and the elephant remembers that it was not mortal and that it was ok. At times, it even felt good after having done what the rider asked it to do. So, when it comes to taking this risk or facing this challenge (or for that matter any similar challenge, where there is no mortal danger), the elephant is able to trust the rider (albeit after a bit of coaxing – this is exactly what happens when you tell yourself, common, you can do it or something similar) and hence takes the plunge with the rider.

This is also the reason why, even after having seen a friend of your’s take the plunge and come back up unscathed, there are some of us who will still not take the plunge. This is because, our elephant doesn’t trust our riders enough, yet.

Just like in any relationship, we can do work to build this trust. In order to do so, we need to take tiny steps, that the elephant is uncomfortable but not crippled and show that it is ok. Then as trust builds, continue to increase the amount of risk and ambiguity so that the elephant starts to trust the rider and his senses.

What this means is that in order for us to succeed in overcoming our fear of failure, we need to fail small. If we want to overcome our fear of public speaking, we need to do small public appearances. IF we want to be creative and original, we need to start slow and show our creativity and originality. If we want to be able to have the uncomfortable conversations, we need to start small and start having conversations that are not necessarily pleasant and work on. If we want to write a book, we start by publishing on a blog. If we are worried about singing on stage, we start singing in front of our families and friends and train ourselves.

Conclusion:

As someone wise has said,

The only way to overcome fear is to go through it.

We are living in a world where creativity and originality will become more and more important. We need to be able to build our capacity to be original.

PS: Here is a short video that in which Dan Heath explains the Elephant and the rider metaphor really well.

A small request:

If you liked what you read/heard, I would request you to head over to my patreon page and become a patron for the blog/podcast. You could do so by contributing anywhere from a single dollar to about 1000 USD depending upon how much you like the blog/show.

Think of it like the following – I will bring thought leaders to your door step and in return all I am asking is for you to spend just enough to get a cup of coffee for the expert that is in your home.

I would like to keep this podcast ad-free and need your support regarding the same. You can also find some very interesting artists whom you can also contribute for.

I myself support James Victore as a patron. If you are an artist yourself, consider becoming a patron for James as well or even set-up your own Patreon Page here.

This got me thinking and I came to a slightly different realization than the one that Seth was alluding to in his book.

I believe that this is exactly what entrepreneurship is all about.

As entrepreneurs, we seek out tense situations and find creative ways to resolve the tension and make money in the process. I believe what separates great entrepreneurs from not so great one’s is the following:

Great entrepreneurs

notice places or situations where theres is a lot of tension and notice if there are people who would be willing to hire someone who could help deal with the tension.

dream about how they could resolve the tension and help these people.

take action and do something to try and resolve the tensions. Since they do not suffer from the fear of standing out they are not caught up in the fear of failure. They know that they do not fail till they give up.

Like this:

One of the biggest hurdles in fostering a culture of innovation in an organization is the fear of failure.

This is one of the most critical aspects of a culture. The fear of failure creates a lot of additional hurdles in the innovation process.

No Breakthrough Innovation: The biggest impact on the innovation process that the fear of failure can have is that this almost ensures that there will be no breakthrough innovation coming out of the innovation process. Any breakthrough innovation requires at some stage for the team to decide to follow an insight/idea that is unconventional or against the common wisdom. This involves some amount of risk that this might not work out and could lead to a failure. The fear of this failure will ensure that the insights/ideas that are the safest bets would be consistently chosen, which could result in average, small scale incremental innovation coming out of the process.

Big Failures: The fear of failure could also lead to spectacular failures. The fear of failure stops employees from raising the red-flag at the first instance when they realize that the project/product is not working out. This leads to a situation where everyone knows that the project is a failure but no one wants to be the one to admit it, which then results in continued effort and resources being put in to the project, when the project should have been acknowledged as a failure and either closed or a pivot done to continue to vie for success.

Lack of learning: This fear of failure also ensures that there is not much risk being taken and hence, not many projects fail, which also means that there is not much learning happening either. As we all know that failure is a much better teacher than success.

Lack of Trust on Leaders: Primarily the fear of failure indicates that there is a lack of trust for the leaders of the organization, which by itself almost ensures that there are even bigger challenges that the organization needs to address in order to remain relevant and innovative.

So, what can we do to create a culture where the fear of failure is replaced by a culture of learning and course corrections.

Re-Frame Failure as Iterations: Re framing Failure as Iterations provides the employees the necessary cushion to explore slightly more riskier insights/ideas when going after innovation.

As with most of the challenges relating to culture, leaders should start talking and behaving in a way that not only tells the employees that it is OK to go after big challenges and fail now and then as long as they are able to admit failure, learn from the failure and do so quickly and cheaply, continue to pivot and address the challenge through pursuing different insight/ideas.

This simple re-framing also creates the culture of experimentation, iterations and pivots. This also reduces the overall cost of innovation, speeds up the innovation process and at the same time creates the possibility for breakthrough solutions coming through the process.

PS: Here is a video where children have re-framed failure to iteration and not only fare better but thrive in their schools.

What is your opinion? What would you do to address fear of failure in your organization? Do share your thoughts..